MovieChat Forums > Cold Souls (2010) Discussion > ending / inconsistency? (*spoilers*)

ending / inconsistency? (spoilers)

posted 14 years ago by dantso
5 replies | jump to latest

cute and funny at times (a chickpea?)

but I didn't understand parts of the ending... throughout the film they drop hints of a "residue" that remains when you transfer a soul out. And then at the end they state definitively that Nina has had too much of a residue buildup to be able to accommodate back her own soul.

But just prior to that Paul was able to back his own soul IN ADDITION to the (now dead) Russian poet's soul. That obvious doesn't make sense 1) why they wouldn't take out the poet's soul first (why would Paul want to keep it in there in additon), 2) why Paul has enough "space" to accommodate two souls yet Nina can't put back her own.

And overall it just would seem logical that they should take out the poet's soul first, and perhaps give it to the Russian actress (perhaps without her knowing it), before putting Paul's sould back in Paul.

[–] jsmails 14 years ago

One explanation is that being a dead person's soul it simply disappears.

[–] ppllkk 13 years ago

The film explicitly does not answer the question of what happens to a dead person's soul. I would point out, however, that Olga has been dead for two weeks, and Paul has not complained about lacking a soul. He seems to be acutely aware of the situation when he is without a soul, so I assume that Olga's soul, or at least part of it, is still active in him.

1) why they wouldn't take out the poet's soul first (why would Paul want to keep it in there in additon)

They are operating under serious time pressure. They have to finish before Sveta wakes up or someone else shows up at the facility. Their priority is to get Paul's soul back into him, and they just don't have time to do it the right way. Part of the time pressure is that they need to be as far away from the facility as possible before Dimitri starts looking for them.

It is perhaps lucky that they don't have time to think about the issue of what to do with Olga's soul. Both Nina and Paul have connected with Olga's soul, and they would not feel good about casting it adrift.

2) why Paul has enough "space" to accommodate two souls yet Nina can't put back her own.

Souls are of all different sizes. Probably, people differ in their capacity for souls. Nina has accumulated a whole mess of fragments (residues), and there may not be room for her original soul in addition to them. (We don't know how long Nina has been transporting souls. Once a month for five years would be a lot of fragments.) We don't have any information about Paul's capacity for carrying souls.

Paul's soul, when he gets it back, is smaller than it originally was. Residues are left in Nina and Sveta. Also, it is possible that it atrophied to some degree in Sveta. Olga's soul is smaller than it originally was. Part of it stayed in Olga, and a residue stayed in Nina.

We are told that when Paul's soul is originally extracted, at least 95% of it was removed. He is tested to determine this, and the implication is that the extraction rate varies. This is all of the information we're given about extraction rates, and it is only one case.

[–] rooprect 13 years ago

... throughout the film they drop hints of a "residue" that remains when you transfer a soul out. And then at the end they state definitively that Nina has had too much of a residue buildup to be able to accommodate back her own soul.

But just prior to that Paul was able to back his own soul IN ADDITION to the (now dead) Russian poet's soul. That obvious doesn't make sense 1) why they wouldn't take out the poet's soul first (why would Paul want to keep it in there in additon), 2) why Paul has enough "space" to accommodate two souls yet Nina can't put back her own.

This is exactly what I was getting at in another thread. As you said, there is a residue that builds up over time (probably a result of the 5-10% of the soul that's left behind), and eventually Nina gets gummed up to the point that she can't take any more transfers.

At the same time, Paul is able to cram 2 souls into his body at once. How's that?

The only quantifiable explanation is that the body has enough "headroom" that it can fit 2 souls under normal circumstances. However, Nina's circumstances aren't normal. She is so full of residue that it has completely clogged her.

Think of it this way: each body is like a 16-oz glass.

A normal soul is maybe half that size, 8-oz, which leaves room to cram 2 souls in the glass. But in Nina's case, the glass has built up so much residue--like a glass that's never been washed and has built up an inch of gunk all over--that its capacity isn't even 8-oz. It helps to imagine that each soul is like a thick molasses that sticks to the glass.

Anyway, that's the only way I can explain your question #2.

As for question #1, my guess is that they got sloppy in their transfers, or maybe they were so pressed for time that they decided to forego the procedure of extraction before dumping his original soul back in him. I agree it's kind of weird that nobody would even mention it, but as I recall they were in a real hurry so I guess that's how it happened.

[–] PC_Green 13 years ago

When they were putting Paul's original soul back in they attempted to remove the poet's soul.

At the end of the transfer they remove the glass jar, give it a shake and ask what happened to it.

I like to think that since the souls owner was dead when they removed the soul form Paul, it just disappeared and is missing. That why they look at the empty jar and make a comment about it being empty.

On a side note the audio for this movie was not very clear, I missed alot of dialog.

[–] MessenjahM 13 years ago

They did take out the poet's soul, otherwise they wouldn't have checked the jar for it. The machine must be programmed to extract any current soul before implanting a new one, it did so first and was successful otherwise it would've signaled an error. I like the explanation that because the woman died, her soul simply vanished as soon as it was detached into the jar.